SolidWorks Roadster

Partner Program Roadster Sponsors Get Involved…

SolidWorks Solution Partners, ATI (now AMD) and HP recently got into the act, demonstrating that the Roadster initiative is truly a SolidWorks community event.  The short story - SolidWorks learned early on that our customer, Factory Five Racing, utilizes HP workstations and ATI graphics to power their SolidWorks software and ultimately design better products.   We then approached these partners to see if they wanted to help support the effort and be a part of the fun.  HP and ATI truly stepped up with some valuable contributions.  As part of their generosity, a case study piece was written on Factory Five, the technology, and how it all came together.  Also inspired by this initiative, there is going to be a partner video about Factory Five Racing’s technology so stay tuned…

Here are a few pics of the HP and ATI representatives at the garage; both John and Jeff were there that night -- so the partners got some ‘extra’ thanks.  Go Here to view the success story.

P.S.: Don’t be surprised to see some HP and ATI logos popping up in a few places ;-)

Nick Iwaskow

Solution Partner Marketing Manager

It's ALIVE!!!!

Please welcome the latest addition to the SolidWorks family. After a somewhat lengthy and laborious labor, the fuel, water, and oil began to flow thru her veins and she took her first breath, er, in this case, more like a belch. A belch of flame right out the carburetor!!  Not to worry, this is common for newborns. With a slight turn of her distributor, all was well and she sprang to life!! After a short run in period where we checked her pulse, pressure, and checked for any "leaks", we brought her back to an idle. When Tony (from Crane Cams) told me he made this cam with a nice "Saturday Night" idle, he wasn't fooling. WOW!!! When this girl idles, it'll make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end!! A hot cam at idle is the second coolest sounding thing on the planet, the first being a top fuel motor. There was a couple of technical difficulties that prevented us from doing the dyno pull. Luke (from Powerbuilt Performance Engines where the engine is sitting at this moment) is going to try and resolve that today and hopefully be able to dyno it on Monday. I'd like to thank Alan, Luke, and the rest of the guys at Powerbuilt Perormance Engines for their continued support thru out this engine build. They were always willing and eager to jump in and do whatever needed done to help out on this engine. Many thanks to Tony from Crane Cams for fielding our many questions when we were deciding on what cam and valve train to use in this engine and any question we had during the build. Thanks to Dave, Kevin, Charles, and Tom for helping out with the engine build in my garage. Thanks to Brian for letting me use his P-Card. It's been fun, makes me want to build another one. Stay tuned for the sound bites.

Steve McGilvrey

Engine is pretty much done

We finished up the engine this weekend as far as we can go with the parts we have. We're waiting on a different set of valve covers, the ones in these pictures are just sitting on the engine since they interfere with the rocker arms. We'll put the plug wires on when we get it on the dyno. We plan on taking it down to the shop for the break in and dyno within the next couple of days.

Steve McGilvrey    

"Lend me your ears"

  A few weeks back, we were graced with the presence of a very special guy.  I am pleased to introduce you to Evan Carter, the custom audio & accessories guy.  Working for The Driver's Side, he made his way over to the garage with many "goodies" in tow.  After a brief description of what we were looking for as far as the audio setup, he pulled some items from his truck and showed us what our options were and how he'd be able to hook us up.  This was definitely the right guy.  It didn't take us long to decide on what we were going with.

As the roadster continues to come together, we will be adding the following: An Alpine dock, speakers and a LAT-5 subwoofer, an iPod mount, duramats for the floorboards, and the all important fire extinguisher. 

I think we did quite well.

-Kiera Ciccone :)

Engine work

Heads are on and we were mocking up the timing cover and water pump to see if the bolt kit we recieved had what we needed to bolt them on. We had to order 4 special bolts because of the difference in the block we are using and a couple extra bolts for our specific application using this particular water pump. We'll have them tomorrow. Pushrods should be here today so I plan on doing the valve train tonight. Starting to look like a real engine now. Thanks to Tom for coming out last night and helping out.

Steve McGilvrey

Engine build in full swing now

Ok, going to be lots of pictures in this one. First off was mocking up the valve train for one cylinder using light weight checking springs and adjustable push rods to check both for piston to valve clearance using clay stuck to the top of the piston in the valve reliefs, and to also adjust the push rod length until we get the correct valve stem to rocker contact.  After the valve is pushed into the clay, we section the clay and measure the thickness. This tells us the distance between the valve and the piston at their closest point. Now that we have determined the correct length the push rod needs to be, we can order the push rods. Next we installed the oil pump and oil pump pick up. We then remove the light weight check springs and install the correct valve springs. The next job was supposed to be simple, knock the pin out of the distributor gear and using a gear puller, pull the gear off the distributor shaft. The pin came out easy enough but we couldn't budge the gear with the puller. You know when you have to get the cutting torch out that things are getting seroius. We heated up the gear to get it to expand a little but the puller still wouldn't budge it. We moved to the hydraulic press while the gear was still warm and pushed it right off - yahoo!! The reason why we had to remove the gear is that a stock gear is made of iron. We have a steel billet camshaft in this engine which would eat this iron gear alive. We needed to install a steel gear in it's place. Thanks to Kevin, Dave, and Charles for coming out and helping.

Steve McGilvrey

Assembled shortblock

The shortblock is complete. We have fitted and checked clearances on the oil pump, oil pump drive, oil pump pick up and oil pan. No problems were found in that specific area. Those components will be assembled at a later stage of the build process. We were setting up to check piston to valve clearance and discovered they had sent us the wrong head bolts. This block takes 1/2" head bolts which we discovered earlier and had ordered but when we opened them, they were the stock 7/16" head bolts. Once we get the right head bolts, we'll be checking piston to valve clearance during valve overlap. If there is no valve to piston interference, we don't anticipate any further roadblocks. Thanks to Charles Parez for coming out on Sunday to help out.

Steve McGilvrey

Checking piston to deck height

Just a short little post showing how we check our piston to deck height and our top dead center. Typically we would check this on number one cylinder but since our crank runs into the block when you try to rotate it, we settled for one of the other cylinders where we could get a piston and rod installed at TDC. The main bearings are too tight on clearance so we need to get a different set of bearings. (Maybe we should have used Swift to check tolerances :-)) As soon as we get the block ground out to clear the crankshaft and wash it up again, we'll be ready to start getting this thing together and move things along again. We finally got the correct head gaskets after trying three different sets. Turns out this Ford Racing SVO block takes all kinds of special items to work with it.

Steve McGilvrey

Most of the engine parts

We laid out most of the parts for the engine to take a picture of everything before we start assembling it. There are still a few items we need to get but for the most part, these are the components needed to build an engine.

Steve McGilvrey

Simply 'Dash'-ing...

Saturdays are becoming the - can't miss -  build days around the garage.  As we push forward,  all sorts of cool work has been tackled, including: alignment of the front wheels, installation the wheel splash guards, initial body-on fit, and layout for our custom dash.  We rolled the car out of the garage for the first time as well, and all of the team leaders agreed that, although a kit, this is still one heck of sweet looking ride.

- Jeremy